The Last 5 Years in Baltimore

I never believed I was in Baltimore by accident. I woke up one morning in my senior year of college with the sort of impulsive conviction to move here that can only be attributed to fate. When I met a guy a matter of weeks after moving here, I was sure he was the reason I was here. When it fell apart the following year, I questioned all of my instincts and shook my fists at the fates and desperately wanted to run very far away and never look back.

And yet, here I am.

In the winter of 2011 I had been living here discontentedly for a year and a half and gave myself 6 months to find my people or pick up and go. Of all places, I started to find my people on Twitter in the technology community. I have to credit Kate Bladow for being a connector extraordinaire. It was on Twitter that I learned about Create Baltimore, and having declared to Crystal that I was going to Do Things and Go Places and Meet People, I went. Something clicked that day – I found a community of people that inspired me. I decided to stay. Relying on instinct again, I put an offer on a house the very next week.

I found myself in a dark place a year later, feeling completely at odds with my career, which was essentially my whole adult identity. We’ll call this a quarter life crisis. I made a sharp turn into the world of venture capital, which didn’t quite fit me, either. There were a lot of restless nights in the fall of 2012 as I wrestled with the spark of an idea that would not leave me alone. I saw it, but I didn’t know how to build it. I didn’t even know where to start. It was an utterly absurd, terrifying notion. I considered the worst case scenario and imagined abject failure, humiliation, bankruptcy. In this case, I supposed I would book a one way ticket someplace far away and open a waffle stand on the beach. That sounded pretty ok, actually. For a third time, I trusted my instincts.

And so, here I am.

Since I’m a big nerd, here’s a little infographic of some Life Olympics highlights from my last 5 years in Baltimore.